


Warming Up

by ForensicSpider98



Series: Love After the Fact [47]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, All this stress is bad for the baby, Altean Adam (Voltron), Altean Prince Lance (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Aromantic Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Balmeran Hunk (Voltron), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Galra Shiro (Voltron), Galran Prince Keith (Voltron), Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Multi, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Olkari Pidge | Katie Holt, Post-War, it's keith. keith is the baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24542596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForensicSpider98/pseuds/ForensicSpider98
Summary: So... Somebody requested an entire episode of Klance cuddles and well, I'm not gonna say no <3<3<3Also, I know little about anatomy and biology, so my answer to your questions will always be: ALIENS
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Alfor/Coran (Voltron), Allura/Lotor/Romelle (Voltron), Haggar/Zarkon (Voltron), Hunk & Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: Love After the Fact [47]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1635043
Comments: 32
Kudos: 217





	Warming Up

Turns out there are side effects of being shoved into an Altean healing pod. Keith discovers this after Lance gets in the shower. He’s up in the loft, looking at the frosted world outside, and he’s suddenly _freezing_. Extremely cold. Shivering. Even the blanket doesn’t help very much.

“Keith?”

“I’m- I’m up h- here!”

Lance’s damp, white head pops up over the top of the ladder. His hair, Keith registers, is curly when wet. “Woah, are you okay?”

“N-not s-s-sure.”

Lance crawls over, right up against him, wraps the blanket around them both. “You are very cold, beloved.”

“N-no sh-sh-shit.”

“At least you’re still sassy.” Lance puts an arm around him, and Keith huddles into his warmth. “This happens sometimes. It should set itself right in a quintant or two.”

“I hope s-so.”

Lance kisses the base of his ear. “Once you're ready to climb down, I’ll get the fire going and we’ll keep you nice and warm.”

“Thanks. Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I doubt this is what you wanted to do on your day off. Babysit me. Again.” Keith closes his eyes, settling his head against Lance's chest, feeling, hearing the steady beat of his single heart.

“Oh yes, spending a day with my husband all snuggled up to me. How awful,” Lance deadpans. Then he smiles. “I don’t mind. I like spending time with you. And looking at your beautiful face.”

“You’re the beautiful one.” Everyone on Altea knows it, and people outside the planet have heard of it.

“You’re wrong. Shut up.”

“No.”

“You’re the worst. Just so you’re aware. Ready to go down?”

“I think so.” Keith examines his hands. The majority of his shivering is gone, and he’s not nearly so cold. He should be able to make it down the ladder.

Lance climbs down first. He watches Keith descend, helping him with the last few rungs just in case. He still seems tired, despite their second nap. Lance will have to make sure they both sleep tonight.

Bundled up in front of the fire, Lance immediately knows he’ll be uncomfortably warm for a while, but it’s okay. Besides, he finds himself sufficiently distracted the moment Keith asks-

“Do you _want_ kits?”

“Well that’s one way to start a conversation.”

“I just- It feels like something we should talk about now, instead of waiting for me to go into season.”

Lance blushes. “Fair enough. Um. Actually, I genuinely do want kids. I mean, we’re expected to have two, but I really like kids? I think they’re great, and I’ve always wanted two of my own.”

“Two?”

“Well, yeah. Altea’s not exactly a big planet, so we control population very carefully by limiting the number of children a couple can have. Currently, under law, children are born at a one-to-one ratio. It used to be just two children per family, but with an increase of polyamory, my father changed the law. It’s one of the cooler things my father’s done.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Keith’s ears wilt, one brushed against Lance’s jaw.

“What is it?”

“I… I always imagined more than two.”

“ _Really?_ ”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” Keith grumbles.

“Well, I- I dunno. I just didn’t think of you as the type. That’s all.” Lance rests his cheek atop Keith's head, feels Keith's tail wrap around one of his ankles.

Keith sighs, settles against Lance. “My family life growing up was pretty much destroyed, but I always imagined doing better. Finding a mate. Just living a life. I want that. A lot.”

“So you want a lot of children.”

“Yes, but just two will be okay.” _I guess._

“We’ll find a work around. How many?”

“Four?”

“So, as long as the last two are conceived on Daibazaal, then we can call them accidents.”

“Hey, I’m technically expected to have at least four for my own planet anyway, so…”

“We must do our duty to both of our peoples,” Lance murmurs, grinning when he feels Keith's quiet laugh against him.

“Hm. Very true.” Keith’s smile slips into a small frown, more thoughtful than anything else. “But maybe not this first season. Maybe… Maybe this first one should just be about us. I won’t remember much of it, but I still like to think it’ll mean something. And-”

“And sometimes it's better to take one big change at a time.” Lance kisses the base of Keith’s ear. “I’ll talk to Shiro and Adam about contraceptives, and we can revisit kids in another five phoebs.”

“I’ll be ready then.” Keith closes his eyes. “Thanks for understanding.”

“I don’t understand. That's why I'm glad we're talking about this. I don’t understand at all how your growth cycles work. I don’t understand how you’ll change… Part of me wonders if I’ll even recognize who you become.”

“You’ll recognize me. I’ll be a little more… grown up, but I’ll still be me.”

“So you’ll still be all sassy and beautiful?”

Keith glares at the folds of their blanket, ears aflutter. “Well, I don’t know about beautiful, but-”

“Good thing I’m an expert.” There’s something a little dark in Lance’s eyes now, some piece of want Keith hasn’t ever seen before. It’s gone as quickly as it appeared, blinked away. “We should spar tomorrow. I want to do more. Get better.”

"Okay."

"I can show you, if you want. How beautiful you are." Lance slips a hand under Keith’s shirt, drawing fingers up his spine, feeling the way his muscles tense and coil. Curious, Lance reaches out, lets his quintessence sink beneath Keith’s skin, exploring his body. Keith allows it, lets Lance explore him. If he could, he'd do the same. They're such different creatures.

Lance feels the way Keith's body is already priming to grow, feels stores of nutrients beginning to build up in his cells, feels the way his-

“Your bones. What’s wrong with-” It’s not his bones. Not entirely. His growth plates. He can feel them. Loosely knit, they’re not stitched quite right into the surrounding bone. “So that’s why you’re small."

“As rude as that is, it's pretty cool how you can tell. My growth plates are insufficient. Efforts to correct the issue proved temporary. When I grow, it's painful and the physical output is extreme.”

“I can tell,” Lance murmurs, still threading quintessence through Keith’s body. Whatever's wrong with his growth plates, it's something fundamentally wrong. Even his father wouldn’t be able to rectify it. “That plus a season-”

“My body likely wouldn’t be able to support a fetus.” Keith sighs. “That’s the main reason I want to wait, truthfully. I don’t want to go through that... I think my mother did. More than once. She's never said so, but sometimes... I see it in the way she looks at me.”

“I don’t want to go through that either. I won’t put us through that.” Lance closes his eyes, their bodies settling together, sinking into one another. “Galra are so… different. And _you_ are just beautifully made.”

“I am?” Keith twists in Lance’s space, peers up into his blue and pink eyes. “How so?”

Lance gulps. He can see his quintessence firing in Keith’s eyes, in his veins, glowing a pristine blue-white. It's unearthly, ethereal, illuminating the shafts of his fur, his hands, his lips. All the places where veins are concentrated. Haunting and beautiful at the same time.

“I can see… Your hearts beating. I can tell that you’ve always been strong, but it didn’t use to be because of training. You used to have a more… organic strength, didn’t you? I can tell by your muscles attachments. Um… Wow, your eyes really are that large, huh? Not just a kit thing, they’re just big.”

“Is that bad?”

“Um. No? It means you have a pretty face. The surface of your brain is quite well-textured, but I don’t need that to tell you’re intelligent-”

“Do Alteans have a flattery bone or is this a quality that’s unique to you?”

Lance laughs, Keith’s mirroring chuckle inches from his lips. He leans in, brushes their noses together. “I don’t have a flattery bone, nor is flattery unique to me. I just happen to be very, very good at it. Your hearts are beating very fast. Why?”

“You- I think you’re done now,” Keith whispers. Lance immediately pulls away, slips out of his system. But his fingers stay, toying with his dorsal fur, exploring the texture. It’s so different from his own. _Alien_.

Lance wants to learn all the differences between them, knows he’ll have to start slower than he is. He carefully removes his hand, slips it around Keith’s waist. “Better?”

“Almost.”

And Keith leans up, pressing their lips together, humming into the contact. It doesn’t spark arousal, but it sparks warmth, something he could easily get addicted to. It makes him feel wanted. Even... _loved._

Lance tastes like a bright future.

**Author's Note:**

> Next time on Love After the Fact: Keith and Lance have to go back to work.


End file.
